
3 



Personal Reminiscences of 

The Caribbean Sea and 

The Spanish Main 




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Qass-E§lX! 
Book H% 



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Personal Reminiscences of 

The Caribbean Sea and 

The Spanish Main 

Written by 
Francis Russell Hart 

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Boston : Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen 




One hundred and twenty-five copies have been printed 

for Francis Russell Hart by The De Vinne Press, 

in June, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen 



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To the Members of the 

Club of Odd Volumes: 

These scattered notes of the happenings 
of for the most part, some twenty-odd 
years ago, were first written down for one 
of the monthly meetings of the Club. 

The insistent and perhaps ill-advised 
suggestion of one of the members that the 
notes be continued and finally printed is 
the reason for putting into permanent 
form reminiscences which have, it is 
feared, too little of interest to merit pres- 
ervation. 

This little volume is presented to you in 
a spirit of humility. Tou need not read it. 
If it meets with your simple acceptance 
it will have fulfilled its destiny and the 
hopes of 

The Author 

Boston, June, 1914. 




Personal Reminiscences of 

the Caribbean Sea and 

the Spanish Main 

>OR us of the New World 
there is no place which 
so fires our spirit of ad- 
venture and romance as 
the Caribbean Sea. The 
very names "West In- 
dies" and "the Spanish Main" give to us 
a grateful sense of sea-fights, treasure- 
laden ships and atrocities, the thoughts of 
which give a pleasant tingle to our blood. 
In picturing to ourselves palm-covered 
shores, fever-infested jungles, and hidden 
harbors sheltering the black flags of 
swarthy buccaneers we can give our imag- 
inations free scope, with assurance that 
some part of the romantic picture is true. 
The brave deeds, even the frightful 
horrors, have a delightful quality of be- 
ing part of our own family history, even 
if a trifle vicarious and remote. The geo- 
graphical nearness of these waters and 
lands, the important influence of the 

struggles 



1J 

struggles for their mastery on our own 
early development as a nation, and our 
blood kinship with the Elizabethan sea- 
men give to the stirring events of the 
Caribbean a definite place in the environ- 
ment which has controlled our own 
growth. 

Then the sense of nearness in point of 
time is a strong fillip to our fancy. The 
happenings which set aglow the swash- 
buckler spirit dormant in all men are 
events of no remote time. It is not of the 
red and white bulls of Ireland nor of the 
heroes of old sagas and epics that we read, 
but records of stout-hearted men who 
lived their adventurous and mayhap reck- 
less lives so near our own day that it may 
well be that the known forebears of many 
of us here were made fearful or glad- 
dened by the stories of their doings— 
if, indeed, some of us do not number a 
few sturdy sea- rovers in our own family 
trees. 

The conquering march of trade has fol- 
lowed the path of the conquistadores, but 
the romance has not gone. Much of the 
past remains, not only in the white-walled 

fortresses 



"J 

fortresses of the old Spanish towns but in 
the spirit of the peoples. It is something 
akin to the old buccaneer spirit that 
causes the unrest in the Latin-American 
countries. The waters are no longer the 
battle-ground of Europe. The sight of a 
vessel hull down on the horizon need give 
the tourist no fear of boarding-pikes and 
plank-walking. Many of the links with 
the past are intimate, however— the ques- 
tion of a disputed title to certain lands 
held to-day by an American corporation 
hangs on the location of boundaries of a 
grant of land to the Columbus family 
four centuries ago. It matters not how 
often one goes, the charm, the half-mys- 
tery of the past is enthralling. It is, I be- 
lieve, some forty-two times that I have 
sailed by the little island believed to be 
the first landfall of Columbus, and never 
without a feeling of exhilaration, a pleas- 
ant stirring of imagination and stimula- 
tion of the adventurous within me. 

For three hundred years after the com- 
ing of Columbus, Europe poured its 
treasure-hunters into this new land. For 
all that period, and without cessation up 

to 



111J 

to this very day, the ships from the Span- 
ish Main have carried to the Old World 
a constant stream of gold. Of later years 
this gold has been more honestly won 
from the earth than in the earlier days of 
plunder, and the never-ceasing stream 
has been broadened by the products of the 
fertile lands— sugar, coffee, fruits, rub- 
ber, tobacco. To tell even an outline of 
the story of the sea fathers of the Carib- 
bean and the struggles of three centuries 
for the mastery of that sea would take too 
long. Often the question of peace or war 
in Europe was determined by the sea- 
fights in the Caribbean. 

Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Drake, Fro- 
bisher, Dampier, Hawkins, Oxenham, 
Morgan, du Poinds, Vernon, de Grasse, 
Rodney— it was men like these whose 
deeds have given us the stories of daring 
and romance which have made these seas 
and shores memorable, and bred in us a 
fervent spirit of adventure. Touching 
lightly, if we can, for the better satisfac- 
tion of our self-esteem, on the part which 
our Colonial forebears bore in the slave- 
trade with the West Indies, we find a 

closer 



V 

closer and less ignoble link in the great 
happenings of the Spanish Main in the 
siege of Cartagena by the British in 1741. 
A body of some thirty-six hundred Colo- 
nial troops, including five companies 
from Massachusetts, were joined to the 
expedition under Admiral Vernon at Ja- 
maica in January, 1741, and took an ac- 
tive part in the disastrous attempt to 
capture that Spanish stronghold. 

Your Committee has seen fit to suggest 
that instead of telling you about the ro- 
mantic past, and the bold sailormen and 
adventurous soldiers and priests who 
lived in that past, I should tell you some- 
what of my own experiences in and about 
the Caribbean. Perhaps the Committee 
realized that my own knowledge of the 
vastly entertaining historical side of the 
Caribbean Sea is superficial, or at best, 
where it goes deeper than the surface, 
limited to certain short, disconnected 
periods and places. 

In giving you a few personal reminis- 
cences gained from some years of resi- 
dence and about twenty-two visits, I at 
least have the advantage that even the 

most 



VI 

most learned among you cannot effec- 
tively take issue with my statements. 

The natural gateway from the north to 
the Spanish mainland bordering on the 
Caribbean Sea is through the Crooked 
Island Passage in the Bahamas. The one 
fact known as to the first landfall and 
landing-place of Columbus is that it was 
one of the islands in the vicinity of the 
northern entrance to this passage. The 
journal of Columbus and other evidence 
relative to the precise island are suffi- 
ciently contradictory to leave doubts in 
the mind of any unprejudiced investiga- 
tor as to which of these islands Columbus 
first placed foot upon. The weight of the 
testimony, however, is in favor of Wat- 
lings Island, the location of which, and 
its physical characteristics, are in accord 
with more of the reliable recorded data 
than any of its neighbors. 

It was almost within sight of this island 
that, some twenty years ago, I experienced 
my first West Indian hurricane, and I 
wish that the gift were mine to describe 
a hurricane at sea with the power and sub- 
limity with which Alexander Hamilton, 

while 



Vlj 

while yet a lad, described a hurricane 
which devastated the island of Nevis. It 
was a scfap of a boat I was on, the steam- 
ship "Bowden"— many of you may have 
known her later, as she became the "Bay 
State," the hospital ship of this Common- 
wealth during the Spanish War— a vessel, 
if I remember rightly, of not over six 
hundred tons gross burthen. No ships of 
a size and build like those of Columbus 
could have lived through that night, and 
even the "Alvo" of the Atlas line, a vessel 
nearly four times the size of the "Bow- 
den," was lost with all on board within a 
comparatively few miles of us. During 
the early afternoon the wind had com- 
pletely died out, this in itself a forebod- 
ing symptom in the region of steady 
northeast trades, and a long, heavy swell 
from the southeast had, long before the 
sun set, begun to make the empty ship roll 
about like a drunken seaman. To those 
experienced in West Indian waters the un- 
natural calm and the rising seas were clear 
indications of an approaching hurricane, 
with evidence at the very beginning of 
the first sharp onslaught of the wind that 

we 



V11J 

we were in the dangerous semicircle of 
the storm. As you all know, a hurricane 
is a wind-storm whirling rapidly in a not 
very large circle— the circle itself moving 
at a slower rate along a somewhat pre- 
scribed path. If, as the paths of the hur- 
ricane and ship intersect, the ship finds 
itself so located in the circle of the hurri- 
cane that by turning tail to the blasts it 
can follow the circle and by so doing pass 
around and out of the path behind the 
centre, the ship is said to be in the safe 
semicircle. If, on the other hand, the ship 
is in the other half of the disturbance and 
runs before the storm, its course will sim- 
ply lead it further and further into the 
thick of the hurricane. Under these con- 
ditions there is nothing to do but keep the 
vessel's nose to the storm and trust to God, 
your engines,— maybe supplemented by a 
sea-anchor,— and the staunchness of the 
craft. That a vessel and engines built by 
man could have stood the turmoil of that 
night I would not have believed had I 
not experienced it. I was the only pas- 
senger. The strongest man could not 
have held himself in his berth. Either 

standing 



Vlllj 

standing or half crouching, holding 
tightly on to something or lying flat on 
the cabin floor or deck with arms and legs 
braced, was all that prevented broken 
bones. 

No part of the decks was free from 
breaking seas and swashing water, — the 
noise was one vast, unearthly shriek. So 
awful was that night that it had a gran- 
deur all its own. I believe at such a time 
fear would be abnormal. Fear is more 
often the child of thought than of experi- 
ence. If your whole mind is occupied 
with the needs of the moment to keep 
your bones whole, you have no time for 
thoughts of graver dangers. The awful 
sense of impending calamity was with us 
every moment,— in fact, I believe no man 
on board had the slightest belief, hardly 
hope, that we would ever see another day, 
— and yet that little group of men, born 
in some half-dozen parts of the earth, 
stuck grimly at their posts and waited for 
—they knew not (and who knows?) what. 
Three times that night two of the officers 
and the one passenger, clinging to ropes 
in the lee of the forward deck-house, were 

confident 



X 

confident, so far as it was possible to be 
confident of anything when the blackness 
made one another invisible, that the stern- 
post and after part of the ship had given 
up the struggle against the seas and rac- 
ing screw and that the ship was founder- 
ing. 

Yet the vessel hung together, and we 
told each other in hushed tones the next 
day, when with damaged engines and 
boilers we were huddled in the lee of the 
first landfall of Columbus, that we did n't 
know— and I do not know now— how our 
ship survived that night. 

Passing on through this course marked 
out for us by the great Admiral himself, 
we can discern with strong glasses the 
curve of the coast at Nipe, where Colum- 
bus first landed in Cuba and now the lo- 
cation of a great Boston sugar company, 
the Nipe Bay Company. 

Further to the west on a clear day, the 
island of Hayti and Cape Tiburon, the 
past rendezvous of many a formidable 
fleet and scene of great sea-fights, can be 
made out faintly on the horizon. 

Rounding Cape Mayzi on the eastern- 
most 



XI 

most end of Cuba, most ships head for 
Jamaica, but, in passing, one little inci- 
dent during the Spanish War, relative to 
the lighthouse on Cape Mayzi, is worth 
recording. 

One of the smaller chartered boats of 
the then Boston (now United) Fruit 
Company was on the way from Jamaica 
to Boston, and through one of those un- 
accountable actions which no after-inves- 
tigation explains ran ashore in bright 
moonlight some miles to the westward of 
Mayzi, on the south side of the island. 
The water is hundreds of fathoms deep 
right up to the shore, which is rocky and 
undercut by the seas. The boat was im- 
movably wedged on a piece of ledge, 
swinging around broadside to the over- 
hanging shore as to a quay, and the pas- 
sengers and crew in due course landed 
comfortably by an ordinary gangplank to 
the shore. 

Although the ship was British, the pas- 
sengers were chiefly Americans, and the 
war with Spain was then several months 
old. It was with some trepidation that 
refuge was sought at the lighthouse, and 

a 



Xlj 

a request made that one of the company's 
ships be signalled. Picture to yourself 
the surprise and relief when it was found 
that the lighthouse-keeper and his assis- 
tants had no knowledge that Spain and 
the United States were at war! This was 
indicative of that lack of preparedness 
which afterwards became so evident. 

If there were time, I would like to tell 
you something of the old J amaica— not the 
new Jamaica of bananas, hotels, railroads, 
and tourists, but the Jamaica of those days 
when Sugar was king— a king so power- 
ful and rich that the royal privy purse 
was generously depleted to help fight the 
great Napoleon. The Jamaica planters, 
as a fact, contributed a fund of some two 
hundred thousand pounds as a voluntary 
offering to the King of England to use in 
the wars against Napoleon when invasion 
of England was threatened and feared. I 
am to-day guardian of some young Eng- 
lish children whose scanty income is ill- 
sufficing for their education, and yet 
whose great-grandfather used to ride into 
Kingston from his plantations with a 
coach and four with outriders, and who 

contributed 



Xllj 

contributed personally twenty thousand 
pounds of that gift to the Crown. In this 
little hint of the experience of one family 
can be found an epitome of the island's 
history for the last hundred years. King 
Sugar is dead, and the Banana is king. 
It was not, of course, my fortune to know 
the island in those rich and certainly often 
riotous old days, but it was my happiness 
to know it before the panoply of the past, 
somewhat bedraggled perhaps, had given 
full place to the new regime. I knew it 
when family life on the big plantations 
still existed, when the prestige of old fam- 
ily names was greater than that of the 
great banana company,— for which at the 
time I was stringing telephone wires,— 
and when tourists were practically un- 
known and one moved about, as I did, on 
horseback with saddle-bags, in three- 
mule mail-coaches, or in more preten- 
tious private traps. Frayed at the edges 
as were the trappings of former great- 
ness, the hospitality and good cheer were 
sincere and warm, and I wish it were 
possible to take you to that dear, open- 
hearted, lovable old Jamaica. 

That 



X111J 

That part of the mainland settled and 
occupied by the Spanish was called, in 
distinction from the islands of the Carib- 
bean, the Spanish Main. Roughly it can 
be said to have included all that part of 
the South American and Central Ameri- 
can coasts bordering on the Caribbean 
Sea, but more particularly the lands ad- 
jacent to the shore line from Lake Mara- 
caibo to Yucatan in Central America. 

The important strongholds of the early 
Spaniards on this mainland were Carta- 
gena, Nombre-de-Dios, Porto Bello(near 
Nombre-de-Dios and which supplanted 
that place), and, of lesser importance, 
Chagres and Santa Marta. Of these Car- 
tagena was far the most formidable and 
interesting. Both for that reason, and 
because I lived there for several years, 
the few scattered reminiscences of which I 
have made notes to tell you have as their 
birthplace the Republic of Colombia. 

Cartagena itself is too interesting a 
place to pass by without a word as to its 
past— a past the records of which are 
singularly present in the almost imperish- 
able masonry of its buildings and fortifi- 
cations 



XV 

cations, as well as in the traditions and 
habits of its citizens. 

The history of the European settle- 
ments in Colombia may be said to have 
begun about a century before the Pil- 
grims landed at Plymouth. Columbus 
touched at points on the Colombian coast 
in the autumn of 1502. 

The conquistadores, seeking a safe 
storehouse for their treasure and a ren- 
dezvous for their ships, found in the land- 
locked bay of Cartagena a place with 
every natural condition for their purpose. 
By confining the only navigable entrance 
to the bay— a body of water about two- 
thirds the size of Buzzards Bay— to the 
narrow opening at Boca Chica and pro- 
tecting that entrance by two massive stone 
forts, they secured one of the finest and 
best protected harbors in the world. The 
city of Cartagena was founded in 1533, 
and the construction of its fortifications, 
many of which are standing in practically 
perfect condition to-day, began immedi- 
ately. The walls were begun near the 
close of the sixteenth century and finished 
just before the end of the seventeenth. 

Notwithstanding 



XVI 

Notwithstanding that there was no lack 
of slave labor, the walls are reputed to 
have cost so many millions that I hesitate 
to quote the Spanish records, which give 
an equivalent of over $50,000,000 of our 
money. The system of walls, moats, and 
bridges was designed to make the place 
impregnable from land or sea. It is note- 
worthy, however, that those early Span- 
iards did not put all of their efforts and 
labor into the fortifications; their other 
works were designed to stand for cen- 
turies; the cathedral, begun in 1538 and 
finished a half-century before the first 
shelter was built at Plymouth, stands to- 
day, a dignified if somewhat sombre me- 
morial of that close association of the 
sword and the cross which must have 
been confusing to the minds of the toiling 
slaves who worked on its building. The 
old Inquisition Building, now the private 
residence of Colombian friends of mine, 
is a grim reminder of how near to our 
own time these old days were. 

The convent of Santo Domingo, built 
in 1559 and interesting in design, is in a 
perfect state of preservation, and that of 

the 



XVlj 

the Franciscan fathers, built in 1575, while 
in a less perfect condition, is picturesque 
as seen from my old office windows across 
the Plaza de la Independencia. 

In 1586 the walls and fortifications 
were not wholly completed, and Sir Fran- 
cis Drake captured the place, accepting 
for its release a large ransom. A little less 
than a century later, Admiral du Pointis, 
with a French fleet supplemented by a 
fleet of buccaneers from Hayti, again 
forced the payment of a ransom, and in 
1 74 1 the British fleet under Admiral Ver- 
non, with many troops on board, took the 
place after a long siege. 

This is the expedition to which I al- 
luded and in which American Colonial 
troops were employed. The victory was, 
however, only partial, and accompanied 
by such heavy losses that it was almost 
more serious than a defeat. 

During the first year of my residence 
at Cartagena I lived just under the 
shadow of the fortress of San Lazaro, 
which never surrendered and where one 
of the bravest and bloodiest battles of this 
continent was fought. 

Colombia 



XVllj 

Colombia freed herself, under the lead- 
ership of Bolivar, from Spain in 1819, 
and twice during the war of indepen- 
dence Cartagena was besieged,— in fact, 
in the too frequent political troubles of 
Colombia since the day of her indepen- 
dence the extraordinary strength of Car- 
tagena to withstand ordinary infantry 
attacks has made it a city to be besieged 
rather than taken by storm. 

Traces of the old road to the Magda- 
lena River and the interior still remain— 
the old road down which came whip- 
driven bands of Indians carrying the 
looted treasure from the mountains and 
river valleys of the mysterious back land 
whence came always the alluring tales of 
El Dorado. A few notes relative to that 
wonderful golden country— that ignis 
fatuus of the conquistadores — and some 
researches in a small way that in associa- 
tion with others I have made, may be of 
some interest. 

In proportion to the needs of the peo- 
ple for a ductile metal, gold appears 
to have been abundant and. in common 
use among the native tribes in nearly 

all 



XVlllj 

all of the early settled places on the main- 
land. 

For the practical uses of a primitive 
people and for their decoration the easily 
worked metal, found without excessive 
labor in a pure state in the river beds, was 
adapted by crude tools to their needs. It 
was not strange that the prodigal use of 
the metal awakened in the early discover- 
ers and settlers a lust for conquest and a 
belief in the New World as an inexhaus- 
tible source of treasure. Herrera tells of 
the gift, in 1518, to Juan de Grijalva by 
the cacique of Tabasco, of a complete 
suit of gold armor, made and fitted as if 
it had been made of steel. 

Stories reached the coast of a wonder- 
ful country back in the mountains with a 
great and marvellous city fairly ablaze 
with glittering gold and priceless gems. 
The search for El Dorado and the great 
city of Manoa, on the banks of a mythical 
inland sea, began. The imagination per- 
mitted no limit to the extravagant won- 
ders of this place : its houses were covered 
with golden tiles and filled with statues 
of pure gold, while its king sat on a 

throne 



XX 

throne of solid gold. So definite were 
these beliefs that on nearly all sixteenth 
century maps the lake called Parima is 
shown. The imaginative and falsifying 
explorer is not a phenomenon of our day 
only. In 1534 one Juan Martinez re- 
ported that he had spent seven months in 
Manoa. How colossal a lie his own story 
was, it is now impossible to tell, but by 
the time it had been repeated by the ex- 
cited and credulous tongues of the monks 
who heard his dying tale, the story was 
one to inflame the cupidity of the adven- 
turous of all nations. The expedition of 
Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, by way of 
the Orinoco, although a complete failure, 
as of course it had to be, was reported by 
him to have confirmed the tales. The 
location of El Dorado, although some- 
what uncertain in the descriptions gener- 
ally given, fixed its position at the head 
waters of one or the other of the great 
rivers. It was generally believed that up 
in the mountains, dimly seen by those 
who ventured inland, there existed a great 
body of auriferous earth from which the 
mysterious inland lake, extracting the 

gold, 



XXI 

gold, fed its waters to the Orinoco and 
other rivers entering the Caribbean. 
Humboldt made a careful study of the 
geography, facts, and traditions respect- 
ing El Dorado, and it was not until his 
time that the belief in its actual existence 
was ended. 

In 1536 Nicolas Federmann searched 
the upper waters of the Magdalena, and 
Geronimo de Ortal tried to discover on 
the banks of the Meta the reputed Casa 
del Sol, or Temple of the Sun. 

In the light of certain explorations of 
Lake Guatavita in Colombia, it is inter- 
esting to note that Humboldt, in an en- 
deavor to give due weight to the possible 
facts that may have given basis for the 
stories of El Dorado, tells of an inland 
lake, which he believes to have been Gua- 
tavita, where the native great men, their 
bodies covered with powdered gold, 
bathed in the waters, and where the In- 
dians reported that gold dust and golden 
vessels were thrown into the lake as a 
sacrifice to the Adoratorio de Guatavita. 

The Padre Fray Pedro Simon went to 
teach in the Franciscan convent at Bo- 
gota 



XXlj 

gota in 1604, and for nearly twenty years 
devoted himself to compiling historical 
records. He describes the lake, and the 
offerings, with prescribed ceremonies, of 
gold, jewelry, emeralds, and other things. 
In addition to the usual offerings in the 
way of worship he relates that there were 
men still alive who had witnessed the 
burial of some caciques who had ordered 
their bodies and wealth thrown into the 
lake, and that when it was rumored that 
strange bearded men had entered the 
country searching for gold, many Indians 
brought their hoarded treasures and of- 
fered them as a sacrifice in the lake. Some 
of these offerings were in such quantities 
that the cacique of the village of Simijaca 
is said to have alone thrown into the lake 
forty loads of gold of one quintal each, 
requiring to be carried by forty Indians 
from his village. 

The cacique of Guatavita is supposed 
to have been, before the conquest by the 
Spaniards, a powerful ruler controlling a 
large and populous territory, and keep- 
ing up an army of many thousand war- 
riors. The lake of Guatavita is some nine 

to 




Treasure from El Dorado 
[Theo. de Bry, Pars vi., 1596] 



XXllj 

to ten thousand feet above the sea, and 
formed on the top of one of the moun- 
tains of the Colombian Andes. 

The cacique appears to have been also 
a sort of head priest of the Chibchas. 
Nearly all of the old chroniclers give de- 
scriptions of the periodical offerings and 
other rites observed to placate the pro- 
tecting deity who was supposed to live in 
the lake. Grand processions of the ca- 
cique's subjects, carrying gold offerings, 
went up the mountain, and when gathered 
on the banks of the lake the cacique and 
his head man, embarking in canoes, went 
to the exact centre of the lake. There the 
cacique, fully anointed in a paste of pow- 
dered gold, plunged into the lake, while 
from about its banks the people shouted 
and threw far out into the waters their 
offerings of gold, emeralds, and other 
valuable gifts. It well may be that the 
tales of the Golden Man bathing in the 
lake are the foundation for the name El 
Dorado, afterwards applied to the whole 
vicinity. Prisoners taken by the Span- 
iards from time to time, to secure good 
treatment or release told of the sacred 

lake 



XXlllj 

lake in the bottom of which could be 
found immeasurable wealth. The Span- 
iards, in fact, made various attempts to 
drain the lake. Recent photographs 
show the deep cut in the further side of 
the surrounding hills left by the last 
Spanish attempt to reach the treasures by 
drainage. From time to time, by the use 
of sounding leads or by the washing of 
mud scraped from the banks, small gold 
images and emeralds have been found. In 
1897 a company of Colombians started 
anew the work of drainage— an inconve- 
nient matter on account of the surround- 
ing hills. In 1899 a friend of mine, an 
Englishman, acquired, through a con- 
tract, the right on profit-sharing terms to 
complete the drainage of the lake. 

A number of his friends, some attracted 
by the historical and archaeological inter- 
est of the quest, and others by the hope of 
extraordinary profits, joined in furnish- 
ing the requisite funds for the engineer- 
ing work necessary. This work, unfortu- 
nately delayed several years by civil war 
in Colombia and by other causes, was in 
effect completed a few years ago by a 

somewhat 



XXV 

somewhat ingenious plan. A horizontal 
tunnel was bored through one of the side 
hills to a point below, but a little to one 
side of, the edge of the lake. A vertical 
shaft was then sunk, and, when com- 
pleted, so connected with the lake that the 
latter was drained in much the same way 
as the water is emptied from a bath-tub. 
Great difficulty has been found, however, 
in handling the mud and sand at the bot- 
tom. Unfortunately, the place appears 
to be afflicted with prolonged droughts, 
and during the last few years there has 
been practically no rainfall at all. So 
soon as the water had been drained off, 
and before the completion of any proper 
system of working the mud, the surface 
of the bottom was baked by the sun into a 
hard and solid mass below which the 
mud is in a semi-liquid state. Being han- 
dicapped by lack of funds, the work has 
made little progress latterly, but many 
beautiful gold ornaments have been 
found, many emeralds, quantities of 
beads, and much old pottery. The indi- 
cations are that these were all from the 
mud near the shore, and that no part of 

the 



XXVI 

the articles found have come from the 
centre, where the bulk of such things 
would presumably have drifted. 

Within the last year additional funds 
have been subscribed to permit the 
proper working of the mud in the centre, 
which can only be done with adequate 
washing machinery and a supply of 
water. 

Enough has already been found, how- 
ever, to establish the truth of some portion 
of the traditions regarding the lake. We 
may, in fact, have found the very birthplace 
of that alluring story of El Dorado which 
drew to their death many brave souls, and 
was largely responsible for the vigor of 
the struggles for the mastery of the New 
World. 

I will not weary you with an account of 
the construction and operation of the Car- 
tagena Railroad and its allied undertak- 
ings. It is enough to say that the purpose 
of the railroad was to connect the harbor 
of Cartagena with the Magdalena River, 
the great commercial highway of Colom- 
bia, and incidentally to develop the coun- 
try along its route. Misconceptions of 

various 



XXVlj 

various kinds had encouraged the pro- 
moters to expect more traffic and a more 
rapid development of contributory enter- 
prises than the facts justified. Those who 
took over the direction of the company's 
affairs even before the completion of the 
first section of the railroad were not con- 
cerned in the conception of the under- 
taking. It was at that time that I became 
connected with the company as its general 
manager in Colombia. In addition to 
the railroad, the company operated a line 
of steamboats on the Magdalena River, 
which is navigable by boats of the Missis- 
sippi River type to the rapids at Honda, 
nearly six hundred miles from the coast; 
above the rapids, around which a line of 
railroad carries the cargo and passengers, 
smaller boats are worked on the river for 
a distance of some one hundred and fifty 
miles, connecting now— but not then— 
with the Girardot Railway to Bogota. 

The voyages up and down the river 
were always a delight to me, and to those 
of you who are not too fussy about your 
food and some of the minor comforts of 
travelling I can suggest no more interest- 
ing 



XXVI 1 J 

ing and comfortable way of getting into 
the heart of a South American country. 
One of the chief delights to me, however, 
was always the rapids at Honda, and the 
excitement connected with getting our 
upper-river boats either up or down the 
rapids. The procedure was not unlike 
that of which you have seen pictures 
taken on the Nile. The boat is kept off 
from the rocky shore by long poles or 
spars held somewhat uncertainly by ten 
or more men each and driven forward by 
its own stern paddle-wheel supplemented 
by ropes fastened to trees on the shore and 
pulled by strong donkey-engines in the 
fore part of the boat. The passage up the 
rapids takes about five hours; the return 
passage, when required for repairs or 
other exigencies, from three to five min- 
utes. The fact that the insurance did not 
attach from a certain point below to an- 
other point above the rapids used to give 
an added zest to the operation. 

You must forgive me if my recollec- 
tions are somewhat scattering and discon- 
nected. I am jotting down incidents as 
they occur to me. 

The 



XXVlllj 

The railroad from Cartagena leads into 
the Turbaco Hills, as they are called, fol- 
lowing the old Spanish path to the river, 
and reaches at an elevation of about six 
hundred feet, some fifteen miles from the 
shore, the town of Turbaco,— a little vil- 
lage, by the way, which had some distinc- 
tion at one time, as it was here that Gen- 
eral Santa Anna took refuge when forced 
to flee from Mexico. He built a large, 
comfortable house, and appears to have 
enjoyed, for some time at any rate, the 
comforts which could be purchased with 
the price paid by America. On the slope 
of the Turbaco Hills towards the sea I 
had for my amusement a small portrero, 
or cattle ranch, of about seven hundred 
and fifty acres, and the primitive little 
village of Turbaco and its people became 
well known to me. I remember very well 
one little incident from which Judge Par- 
menter, our secretary, should draw in- 
spiration. I had come up from Carta- 
gena on the afternoon train to spend the 
night at my bungalow on the portrero, 
and on arrival had been met by old Mary, 
my black Jamaica washerwoman, her 

shiny 



XXX 

shiny ebony face streaked with tears. Old 
as she herself was, she had just returned 
from a trip to Jamaica, where she had 
gone to make a shroud in which her 
mother was in due course to be buried,— 
not that her mother was dead, but that the 
long trip to prepare her for her last voy- 
age was an act of daughterly devotion 
which gave great comfort to the aged 
black mammy in Jamaica. On her return 
from this cheerful errand, and the family 
fetes connected therewith, she had 
brought with her a goose and gander, 
birds so rare in the fowl yards of Carta- 
gena that she had incurred the envy of 
our previously friendly neighbors. The 
cause of the tears was soon related: The 
goose had been stolen, and Mary and the 
overseer, a tall Jamaica negro who had 
seen army service on the Gold Coast, 
more than suspected a half-breed woman 
of Turbaco called Manuela. The story 
told, and the magnitude of the tragedy 
realized, I started at once on horseback 
with Fraser, the overseer, for Turbaco, 
and called on my friend the alcalde. 
Unhappily, Manuela was of the family 

of 



XXXI 

of some member of the household of the 
alcalde, and for a brief moment I thought 
the wheels of justice had small chance of 
turning in a direction favorable to our 
quest. But our arguments prevailed, and 
a search-warrant, accompanied by two 
peons dignified by policemen's badges, 
issued from the Alcaldia. 

The search of Manuela's wattled and 
thatched cottage and outbuildings not 
only brought to light the goose, but vari- 
ous small articles branded with the name 
of the railway company. As the alcalde 
pointed out, however, the warrant gave 
the right to search for the goose only, and 
nothing else could in honor be seen or 
noted. 

Back in the dark and smoky Alcaldia 
the investigation ended with the return of 
the goose to Fraser. My overseer, how- 
ever, had not the rewards which a sense 
of humor had given me in this tame goose 
chase, and protested with some anger 
when the alcalde was dismissing Manuela 
without even a reprimand. He insistently 
demanded that the woman be punished. 

"What!" said the alcalde. "Is it not 

enough 



XXX1J 

enough that the poor woman has to give 
back the goose, after all her trouble?" 

It was in this same interesting little vil- 
lage that on one quiet Sunday, just as the 
people were leaving the picturesque old 
Spanish church on one side of the plaza, 
a shower of small aerolites, accompanied 
by a slight detonation, fell on the very 
heads and at the feet of the congregation. 
It was undeniably a miracle, and those 
little pieces of heaven-born stones are still 
being worn as amulets by children in 
Turbaco, not only as the sole article of 
apparel, but also, in accordance with cus- 
tom, as the sole precaution against all 
dangers of accident or disease. The fact 
that at the same moment the miracle oc- 
curred an unusually large blasting explo- 
sion, postponed for safety until Sunday 
had kept people from the neighborhood, 
had taken place in one of the railway rock 
cuts some miles away, would probably, 
even if known, not have lessened the effi- 
cacy of the amulets. 

It must have been before the town was 
protected by this wholesale distribution 
of evil-defeating charms that a great fire 

took 



XXXI lj 

took place there, wiping out about a quar- 
ter of its area and destroying some sev- 
enty-five or one hundred of the quick- 
burning thatched houses. One impression 
of that fire is vividly in my mind : I had 
been working with all the railway em- 
ployees I could muster, helping tear 
down and drag away a group of houses, 
outbuildings, ' and fences to stop the 
spread of the fire in one direction, and 
started down a small side street to the rail- 
way storehouse for a new supply of ma- 
chetes, and found in the middle of the road 
a whole family of peons grouped about 
all of their household goods, on the top of 
which was a chromo print of their patron 
saint. The man was first prayerfully en- 
treating the saint to preserve his house 
from the flames, and then threatening him 
if he failed to do so. No other steps were 
being taken to keep the fire away. It was 
too interesting a group to leave, but with 
a few words of suggestion as to ways in 
which he and his family might aid the 
saint in protecting the house, I passed on. 
Returning shortly afterwards, just as 
the flames caught the house and it burnt 

rapidly 



XXXlllj 

rapidly with the sudden rush and roar 
with which these empty wattle and thatch 
huts always burn, I was just in time to see 
the owner hurl the portrait of his hitherto 
respected patron saint into the midst of 
the flames, with imprecations which only 
my failure to understand his rapid and 
angry Spanish prevents my repeating to 
you. As the prefect of the province after- 
wards told me in confidence, saints are all 
very well in their way, but they are 
entitled to the reasonable aid of the ordi- 
nary human agencies. Owing to its mas- 
sive masonry construction and the exclu- 
sive use of tiled roofs, the city of 
Cartagena has had no serious fires, nor is 
it likely to have. 

Perhaps one of the strangest things 
about all of these countries of northern 
South America and of Central America is 
the fact that the almost aboriginal life of 
the country knocks so closely at the gates 
of cities that have been civilized for cen- 
turies. Cartagena, for example, settled 
nearly four centuries ago, with its fine 
buildings, good streets, electric lights, 
ice-plant, clubs, and cafes, is hardly more 

than 



XXXV 

than a rifle-shot from regions which must 
look to-day not far different from the time 
when Drake landed there. Except in one 
direction, no road on which a wheeled 
vehicle can travel extends for more than 
three miles from the centre of the city, the 
one exception being a privately owned 
narrow roadway along the harbor's edge 
to the country house of one of the pros- 
perous merchants. 

For amusement I once drove, during 
the dry season, a light two-wheeled cart 
up to my portrero of Santa Ysabel, of 
which I have spoken, a distance of ten 
miles. This was along the Camina Real, 
the main path to the interior, and even so 
it required lifting the cart over many 
places, and overcoming such difficulties 
that even my man preferred to send the 
cart back on a railway flat-car. 

What is true of the outward evidences 
of civilization is to a large extent true of 
the habits and intellectual life of the 
people. 

In the large cities the better class of 
people are intelligent and cultured. The 
standards of education are high. Their 

literary 



XXXVI 

literary taste, their knowledge of the 
world's history and the current events of 
politics, books and music are above the 
average of similar communities in coun- 
tries which, on the whole, are far more 
developed. Yet within less than fifty 
miles are villages of five to ten thousand 
people who live exactly as they have lived 
for hundreds of years. Men of promi- 
nence in these villages, landowners, had 
vocabularies so limited that no words 
were known to them to explain the sim- 
plest thing regarding a locomotive until 
its actual presence made it possible. The 
citizens of the town of Soplaviento ad- 
dressed a petition to the government ask- 
ing that the railway be not permitted to 
have a station at their town, because, it 
being on the further side of a river over 
which we had constructed a steel bridge, 
they knew that no bridge could be built 
over which it would be safe for trains 
with the added weight of passengers and 
freight to pass. They naively remarked 
in the petition that their less well in- 
formed fellow-citizens might be tempted, 
in their ignorance, to board the train on 

their 



XXXV1J 

their side of the river if the train stopped 
there! 

The railways have changed many 
things, but those pioneer days of their 
construction were in many ways interest- 
ing, as were the people, not only those in- 
digenous to the country, but those who 
came there— often, it must be confessed, 
for the good of the countries they had left. 
One of my dearest friends (and I learned 
to love him sincerely) was the dear old 
Bishop of Cartagena, Monsignor Biffi, a 
venerable Italian, with a long white 
beard, finely educated, but with a heart as 
simple and loving as the cure in the open- 
ing chapters of "Les Miserables." In his 
flowing, purple robes, with the long chain 
and cross hanging below his white beard, 
and his gentle, stately walk, he often came 
to dine with me. With his capacity to 
talk perfectly in Italian, Spanish, Eng- 
lish, French, German, Persian, and I 
know not how many more tongues, he was 
an invaluable guest at the sort of polyglot 
dinners I used to give. Of one rare fac- 
ulty he had the secret, which I never dis- 
covered: he always instinctively knew 

whether 



XXXV11J 

whether the person presented to him was 
of his church or not. If of the Catholic 
faith, his hand always went forward, 
palm down, and it was kissed; if not of 
that church, Jhis hand always went out 
ready for kindly and welcoming grasp in 
the ordinary fashion. 

Althqugh combining in himself the at- 
tributes for the priesthood with those of a 
cultivated gentleman and man of the 
world, Monsignor Biffi had all the charm 
which came from an unaffectedly simple 
nature. It was this quality of simplicity 
that made it possible for him to adapt his 
teachings to the wholly illiterate peas- 
antry. 

If church customs almost medieval in 
character helped hold the ignorant to a 
faith in something, let these customs be 
left undisturbed, he said, rather than that 
their faith should be weakened. 

I remember an incident illustrating 
both the antiquity of the customs at Car- 
tagena, and Monsignor Biffi's anxiety to 
do nothing to shock the reverence of the 
people for any of the forms which con- 
nected the church with their daily lives. 

During 



XXXVlllj 

During Holy Week, from Thursday 
morning until the firing of a gun from one 
of the wall bastions on Easter forenoon, 
any labor not absolutely necessary is 
strictly prohibited in Cartagena. No car- 
riages can be used. A man on horseback 
is stopped at the gates and ordered to dis- 
mount and lead his animal. All the ordi- 
nary functions of city life, including 
marketing and other almost necessary 
occupations, are prohibited. 

Exceptions to these rules are made only 
when, on request, the bishop grants a writ- 
ten "permit," a privilege accorded but 
sparingly in cases of illness or other seri- 
ous condition. 

Our problem was how to operate the 
railway during the period. The trains 
had taken the place of the older forms of 
reaching the city by horse and mule, and 
yet, unlike the latter, the trains could not 
stop outside the city limits. The engine- 
houses, shops, water-tanks, and all the nec- 
essary terminal equipment, were within 
the city. 

Somewhere I have preserved the orig- 
inal permit given to work the trains dur- 
ing 



xl 

ing the proscribed period. Translated, it 
reads something as follows: "Permission 
is hereby given the Railway Company to 
operate its trains, as is the custom in 
European countries, provided they are 
moved as nearly as possible without noise 
and at the speed of a man walking, and 
that the whistles be not blown nor the 
bells permitted to ring except to avoid 
accident." 

The italicized words served as an ex- 
pedient explanation— almost apology— 
to those who might see the permit and be 
shocked at its liberality. 

The failure of the French Canal Com- 
pany had left stranded in that part of the 
world many adventurers and some few 
honest men. Some of both drifted into 
our service. One distinguished but some- 
what worn and wan-looking Italian came 
one day looking for any sort of a job. I 
sent him as camp master in charge of a 
gang of laborers at work on the embank- 
ments near that river the crossing of 
which so distressed the people of Sopla- 
viento. He did his work well, but I did 
not see him again for some time. Mr. T. 

Jefferson 



xli 

Jefferson Coolidge, just then returned 
from his mission to France, made me a 
visit, and at the same time Mr. Gordon 
Abbott, who had come to Cartagena to 
see, among other things, if I were a fit 
person to manage the property, was also 
with me. These two, with an appropriate 
party equipment, went over the line on 
horseback, a journey of several days, and 
were astonished to find in this camp mas- 
ter, at the most forsaken-looking native 
kraal on the whole line, an Italian gentle- 
man of courtly manners, high breeding, 
and fine intelligence ; a man who, in fact, 
gave to his little tent in the mosquito 
swamp the atmosphere of one of the capi- 
tals of Europe. Fortunately, they all 
spoke French, as Gondolfi, the camp mas- 
ter, spoke no English. 

Another interesting member of the flot- 
sam and jetsam of our life there was Al- 
phonse Laurent, a Frenchman of good 
family who had been concerned too inti- 
mately in some Royalist plot and had 
left France from necessity. He had 
served on the staff of a Russian general in 
the Russo-Turkish War, had been con- 
cerned 



xlij 
cerned in a revolution in Hayti, and had 
lost all he had of worldly goods at Pan- 
ama—for be it known that Laurent was 
honest and generous, and Panama in those 
days was no place for a man with these 
qualities. He was our chief accountant 
until his besetting sin, over-drinking, so 
mixed his head on figures that we had to 
put him at other work. It was while he 
was chief accountant, however, that the 
incident always afterwards referred to as 
H 's suicide happened. 

H was clerk in the office ; he was a 

Colombian of nearly pure Spanish ances- 
try, well connected locally, and had mar- 
ried the daughter of a distinguished Co- 
lombian. It was not for these reasons 
solely, however, that Laurent gently for- 
gave many of the lapses which occurred 

owing to H 's overfondness for the 

sparkling wines of France when his 
pockets were full, and the more cheaply 
effective white rum from the local stills 
when his purse was slim. Laurent's heart 
was big, and his own slender purse was 
always open to help those of his staff in 
trouble. Maybe, too, the knowledge of 

his 



xliij 
his own growing weakness made him re- 
main H 's friend when his own peo- 
ple had refused him further aid and only 
Laurent's friendly excuses kept him in his 

job. H was being given one last 

trial— positively the last, I had told Lau- 
rent. One night late, as I sat idly watch- 
ing the sea breaking on the shore at the 
foot of the little cocoanut palm grove be- 
hind my house just outside of the city 
walls, I heard the clatter of the unshod 
hoofs of a pony coming down the road,— 
the little South American ponies, with 
their quick, short, single-foot gait, make 
a curious snappy sound that we never hear 
in the North,— and shortly came Laurent, 
a picturesque sight with his big white hel- 
met and boots and spurs (all of which 
seemed many sizes too big for him), has- 
tily put on over grandly striped pajamas. 
It would not be right to disguise the truth. 
Laurent was certainly drunk— but drunk, 
as he would have said, as a gentleman of 
France should be— that is, he was still 
able to talk and to show that gentle po- 
liteness that never left him. 

Laurent, when sober, could talk equally 

well 



xliiij 
well in either French, Spanish, or Eng- 
lish. When drunk he showed a gentle- 
manly impartiality and used them in a 
confusing fashion. He did not get off his 
horse, but sat somewhat unsteadily; the 
horse, owing to the discomfort of a ner- 
vously swinging pair of legs equipped 
with Spanish spurs, partook of the rider's 
nervousness. 

His story was more or less as follows: 
u Oh, Mr. Hart, it is the dreadful that has 
happened! You know me, Senor, It is 
I, Laurent, after my little dinner, I sit by 

heart and done for that H (Ach! 

that canaille!) more than a brother 
could, and now what is that he has done? 
I, Laurent, after my little dinner, I sit by 
my table and take my cafe and perhaps 
one petit verre— peut-etre more, not 
much, monsieur, but then, this country, 
Senor, and what can one do? And then 

comes that H , his eyes like coals of 

fire and his voice like the dead calling, 
and he say to me, 'Laurent, all is over— I 
can live no more ; I have my wife's ring 
taken and have used it for drink. I must 
die. Laurent, I come to you — you have 

been 



xlv 
been my friend— you will shoot me. It 
is best!' So, Senor, I look at him— I say 
to myself, 'You coward ! you will not shoot 
yourself, and if you do the better for your 

family'— and I say, 'H , you pig, I 

will not shoot you. I have done much— 
too much for you, but this I will not do. 
But you can shoot yourself,' and I handed 
him my pistol. And that pig, Senor, he 
turned the pistol towards himself, and I 

cry out, 'No, H , not here ! You shall 

not a mess make of my house !' and I show 
him the door, and I say, 'Now shoot!' and 
I go back for another little glass— for 
that man he have shook my nerves. And 
I wait for the shot, but none comes. Then, 
ah! what do I hear, Senor?— it is that dog 

of an H running, running fast as his 

legs can carry him, and with my pistol, 
Monsieur! I saddle the pony, but not so 
quickly enough, for I follow too late, he 
gets to that saloon, el Polo Norte, and he 
has sold my pistol and they have given 
him the— oh, so many bottles for it— and, 
Monsieur, it is not right— I am always 
his one friend!" And poor Laurent wept 
real tears. 

But 



xlvi 

But I am taking too much time with 
things that in their local setting had more 
of interest than they have in my clumsy 
telling. 

A tale of the Spanish Main without a 
flavor of a revolution would be looked at 
with suspicion as to its genuineness. For 
commercial reasons I wish I could tell 
you that my experiences did not include 
any connection with armed political dis- 
turbances. Unhappily, however, it was 
the misfortune of the companies I repre- 
sented to be interested one way or another 
in the fighting zone during three years of 
revolution in Colombia. Many of our 
native employees lost their lives even 
while in our service, and the property 
loss went into the hundreds of thousands 
of dollars. 

There is often much of the opera bouffe 
about these South American revolutions, 
but it is not always so; and when one sees 
the suffering, starvation, and sickness at 
close range, the grim wickedness and cru- 
elty of it all sicken and madden one to an 
extent that cannot be explained. 

In general, the bulk of the soldiers on 

each 



xlvij 
each side are harmless, peaceful Indians 
and half-breeds, with no real interest in, 
or knowledge of, what they are fighting 
about. Rarely is any great moral prin- 
ciple or question of right involved, ex- 
cept upon paper. More often it is the 
greed for money and power by a few rival 
leaders or factions. 

To tell you of the rows of peasants I 
have seen brought in, tied in columns by 
ropes, and enlisted the next day as vol- 
unteers; to tell you of the boys in their 
early teens made to shoulder a musket 
and march off to almost certain death in 
marshy jungles, would take too much 
time and serve no purpose. We trans- 
ported over our road one regiment, many 
boys too young to bear the weights they 
had to carry, and in eight weeks brought 
back the same regiment with not one 
quarter still living— and even then we 
had to stop the train to remove those who 
had died in transit before taking the troop 
cars into the city. It will be enough to 
tell you of one naval engagement on the 
Magdalena River in which our own boats 
were part of both engaging fleets. 

~ The 



xlviij 

The natural aim of any band of insur- 
rectionists in Colombia is either to con- 
trol or to interrupt the lines of communi- 
cation between the coast and the interior, 
by seizing the railways connecting the 
river with the coast harbors, or, more 
effectually, by controlling the river Mag- 
dalena itself. The rebellion of which I 
am speaking was intended to be inaugu- 
rated by the sudden and complete capture 
of all river craft. At nightfall on a cer- 
tain day bands of rebels by concerted 
action seized several of our boats which 
had been taking in cargo at our river ter- 
minus, Calamar, and at the same time 
another band attempted to take quite a 
fleet of boats at Barranquilla, near the 
mouth of the river. At the latter place, 
however, the government at the time had 
the only river war-vessel it owned, a 
staunchly built steel boat with bows spe- 
cially fitted for ramming, and with a 
machine-gun mounted in a protected 
tower on the upper deck. This boat the 
rebels were unable to seize, and, their 
attempt being known, they got away with 
a few of the Barranquilla boats only. 

Those 



xlviiij 
Those they did seize started up the river 
to join the Calamar flotilla. The process 
of seizure was to go on board, order off 
at the point of the revolver such men as 
they did not want or need, and force those 
they did need to perform their duties with 
a man by their sides with a revolver con- 
veniently aimed at their heads. As a 
method of retaining officers and crews 
this was generally effective. The night 
was pitch dark; the first boat arriving 
from Barranquilla brought the news of 
the half failure at that port, and the com- 
bined fleet made ready for action, being 
sure that the government, with the "Her- 
cules," the boat with the machine-gun, 
and other boats with the Barranquilla 
garrison on board, would be not far be- 
hind their own boats. 

It happened that the rebels had taken 
at Barranquilla one of the few remaining 
wooden boats on the river, the old "Co- 
lon," a boat not unlike the "Hercules" in 
appearance, but much slower and exceed- 
ing rotten. The result was that the gov- 
ernment fleet of perhaps four boats, in 
spite of its later start, caught up with the 

"Colon" 



1 

"Colon" just as she joined the other rebel 
craft 

Among our boats taken was one of 
our fastest and best, the "Helena," of 
some four hundred tons, on which we had 
one of the best pilots on the river, a pure- 
blooded Indian and a fine man, liked and 
respected by every one of us. With him 
was his young son, a lad of about sixteen. 
With the rebel commander standing by 
his side, poor Vargas was forced to steer 
the "Helena," the pride of his heart, into 
the thick of the engagement. Picture to 
yourselves a dark tropical night, a deep 
muddy river rapidly flowing and about a 
mile wide, seven or eight steamboats un- 
lighted except for the glow from their 
furnaces, the sparks from their double 
funnels, and the continuous flashes from 
rifles fired by hundreds of men crouched 
behind piles of firewood, hastily con- 
structed walls of tobacco bales or bags of 
coffee, and from the cabin windows. It is 
to be feared that in the darkness friends 
and foes lost their identity, and God alone 
knows whence came the bullets that sent 
many a man to his death that night. Sud- 
denly 



li 

denly on the "Helena" the commander 
called to Vargas, "There is the 'Hercules,' 
you must ram her and sink her." In vain 
Vargas protested that the boat pointed out 
was not the "Hercules," but was the 
rebels' own boat, the "Colon." With an 
oath, the rebel commander put the muz- 
zle of his pistol against poor Juan's head, 
and, calling him a liar and a vile name, 
ordered him to steer for what he believed 
to be the armed "Hercules," but what was 
in reality the "Colon." As the steel bow 
of the "Helena" crashed into the rotten 
old wooden hull of the "Colon," and the 
rebel commander realized his mistake, he 
pulled the trigger of his pistol and our 
good, faithful old pilot died with his 
hands on the wheel. 

The "Colon" sank like a shot, and down 
the river whirled its wreckage and the 
bodies of some two or three hundred men 
to be washed out to sea. Altogether, that 
night, some four hundred men lost their 
lives. The "Helena" was badly damaged 
below the water-line, and riddled with 
bullet-holes in all her wooden upper 
works. 

After 



After the impact with the "Colon," 
when his father was shot, young Vargas, 
who by his father's orders had been lying 
on his stomach back of the wheel in the 
pilot-house, got up, took the wheel, and 
safely beached the boat in shallow water. 
From there he stole ashore, and days 
afterwards, a gaunt and half-starved lad, 
he found his way to our office at Carta- 
gena and told his tale. 

Even the periods of domestic peace in 
Colombia were not without occasional 
days or weeks of anxiety. Colombia, 
small as is its importance among the na- 
tions, has had its full share of troubles 
with not only its near neighbors but with 
the European powers. 

Threatened invasions on the Venezue- 
lan or Ecuadorian frontiers were matters 
of some interest but of no distress to us at 
Cartagena; but the threatened approach 
of five Italian war-ships to enforce the set- 
tlement of the so-called Cerruti claims 
against Colombia gave both the govern- 
ment and the railway officials much anx- 
iety. I was out of Colombia at the time, 
and telegraphic communication with 

Cartagena 



liij 

Cartagena, as often happened, was sus- 
pended through temporary trouble on the 
land lines. I had learned by a cablegram 
from Caracas that the Italian fleet, then at 
La Guayra, was under orders to proceed 
to Cartagena and there to seize the cus- 
tom-house and collect the duties until the 
adjudicated claim of Cerruti was paid. 
By a happy chance it was possible to send 
a cablegram to Jamaica to catch a steam- 
ship sailing that day for Cartagena, and 
due there a full twenty-four hours before 
the arrival of the Italian fleet. This mes- 
sage not only warned the railway people, 
but conveyed to the Colombian Govern- 
ment the suggestion that the Italian 
admiral be promptly advised that the 
custom-house, located on the railway pier, 
was the property of an American com- 
pany, and that a five per cent, lien on the 
duties collected was pledged as security 
for certain bonds held by citizens of the 
United States. 

Advices reaching the State Department 
in Washington and the Italian Embassy 
to the same effect, an entertaining inter- 
national complication was created. Our 

efforts 



liiij 
efforts to preserve both our own interests 
and the dignity of Colombia were further 
helped when the flag-ship of the Italian 
fleet ran aground at Boca Chica, the en- 
trance to Cartagena harbor, delaying the 
actual entry of the fleet for three days. 
This accident not only took away from the 
effectiveness and dignity of the naval 
demonstration, but delayed the delivery 
of the belligerent ultimatum brought by 
the Italian admiral until the joint efforts 
of all interested had paved the way for a 
less drastic settlement of the difficulty. 

It was during this period, if I remem- 
ber rightly, that the "Incident of Her 
Majesty's Dispatch Bag," as we after- 
wards called it, occurred. Mr. M 

V was then either secretary or min- 
ister at Bogota, and, having dispatches of 
unusual importance for the Foreign Of- 
fice, he used the good offices of our river 
steamboats and railway service as a pri- 
vate conveyance for the Legation dis- 
patches. 

Simultaneously with the arrival of the 
bag supposed to contain the advices of 
particular importance came a telegram 

from 



lv 

from V , marked "urgent" and beg- 
ging us to use all means in our power to 
catch that bag and detain it, as through 
some mistake it contained not the dis- 
patches, but his soiled shirts and collars I 

Downing Street narrowly escaped a 
surprise, but I venture to believe that it 
would not have been the only soiled linen 
in the archives of the Foreign Office. 

From the veranda at the back of my 
house on the shore, outside the walls of 
Cartagena, a path led through a small 
grove of cocoanut palms down to the sea. 

Early one morning, as I was taking cof- 
fee on the veranda, a motley group of 
bearded men, some with fur-banded hats 
and all wearing the heavy clothing of a 
cold climate, came up the path towards 
me. Even in a country where the unex- 
pected is the likely thing to happen, one is 
hardly prepared to find in one's back 
yard, so to speak, a body of some ten or 
twelve wool-and-fur-wrapped, bearded 
Russians washed up apparently by the 
breaking surf. 

The facts were no less startling than the 
surprise. 

The 



lvi 

The Russian barque "Rota," with a 
cargo of fuel from Cardiff for the railway 
and actually consigned to me, had, in 
thick weather, run upon a reef and been 
abandoned some forty miles to the east- 
ward of Cartagena. The master and 
crew, in two boats, had rowed themselves 
westward until, cheered by the sight of 
the morning light on the domes and tow- 
ers of Cartagena, they had pulled up their 
boats at the first good landing place near 
the city, and by an extraordinary coinci- 
dence which sometimes occurs they had 
beached their boats near enough to my 
house to make it their first place of call 
for help. 

With the exception of the master, they 
spoke Russian only, and he a little Ger- 
man. 

With cotton suits and straw hats from 
the railway commissary, they made a less 
bizarre appearance, but I was heartily 
glad when, in the absence of any Russian 
consul, I persuaded the French consul to 
arrange their passage to Europe. 

Among the people one came to know 
well, both natives and foreigners, were 

many 



lvij 
many fine men— men of education, cour- 
age, and ability, who were filling well 
places of usefulness in the world. 

There were, however, many men (and 
these chiefly among the foreigners) of the 
adventurer type, either seeking temporary 
refuge along the coast or looking unceas- 
ingly for that opportunity which neither 
continuous disappointment nor years of 
wandering had made them give up the 
certainty of ultimately finding. 

There was the tall, lanky Confederate 
soldier from Mississippi who, drifting 
southward, had held a commission with 
one side or the other in almost every in- 
surrection south of the Rio Grande dur- 
ing the last twenty-five years. 

Well over six feet, erect in bearing, but 
over-angular, his profession of soldier 
was guaranteed by a large white military 
helmet, which was made of tin plate 
glaringly whitened with enamel paint. 
This helmet was a constant wonder and 
delight to us. When taken off with the 
easy grace of a courtier and placed on a 
veranda table, it gave forth to us a sound 
of falling kitchen-plates, while to him I 

have 



lviij 
have no doubt it was as the clashing of 
armor. He was a picturesque, if only oc- 
casional, addition to our little coast colony 
—this Knight of La Mancha. 

Then there was the more courageous 
but less honorable gentleman from New 
York who came to Cartagena and char- 
tered, from its agents, a little ocean-going 
steamship, ostensibly for trading in cocoa- 
nuts with the San Bias Indians. 

After one voyage in its legitimate trade, 
having departed with no bills paid, the 
vessel never returned. 

For years its rusty plates would not 
have held together but for the barnacles 
on its bottom ; but, even so, it was not the 
graves of the more doughty galleons 
which had called the vessel, as months 
afterwards we learned that with new 
paint, a new name, and apocryphal papers 
she had been sold for cash by the charterer 
at a port so distant that we wondered by 
grace of what dispensation she had trav- 
elled so far. 

We counted as neighbors those on the 
coast or on the islands, if one or two days' 
sail on the regular liners or tramp ships 

would 



lviiij 
would permit an occasional exchange of 
visits. 

In this way I knew many in the foreign 
colonies at Santa Marta, Barranquilla, 
Colon, and Limon, as well as my numer- 
ous friends in Jamaica and at the more 
distant ports of La Guayra, Curasao, and 
other places. 

It was at one of these ports— I will not 
give its name— that I had the interesting 
experience of nearly witnessing a duel. I 
had arrived before breakfast, and was to 
leave about midnight on the same ship. 
Going up at once to breakfast with my 
friend, the manager of the railroad, I 
found with him another friend, a Ger- 
man, the agent of one of the steamship 
lines. My host was an Englishman, and 
not only manager of the railroad but 
owner of several fruit plantations up the 
line, and a man I had always liked, and 
after this day liked the more. 

The German had seen military service, 
and was a vigorous defender of the Ger- 
man military idea— in particular, its code 
of honor. 

The Englishman had been having a 

dispute 



lx 
dispute with a native landowner called 
(we will say) Salcedo, over certain boun- 
dary rights which affected them both as 
neighboring landowners, and the dispute 
had reached a point where ugly words 
had passed between them. While we 
were at breakfast a General V was an- 
nounced, who in terms of the most perfect 
politeness gracefully explained that his 
friend Senor Salcedo had been insulted, 
and that unless my friend showed that 
gentlemanly and fair spirit which he, the 
general, felt sure would animate him, and 
apologize to Senor Salcedo for the unfor- 
tunate accusations made, it would be the 

unhappy duty of General V (a duty 

which he would perform with a thousand 
regrets) to ask that a friend be named to 
settle the details of the meeting which, for 
two such brave but misguided men, would 
be inevitable. 

The German, getting the scent of an 
affair so after his own heart, could hardly 
be restrained from announcing himself as 
the needed friend and taking charge of 
the matter at once. The Englishman, 
however, without more interruption to his 

breakfast 



lxi 
breakfast than the barest courtesy to Gen- 
eral V required, told the German to 

keep quiet, and then turned to the general 
with the information that Salcedo was an 
ass, that the days of duelling were over, 
and that if he heard any more such silly 
talk he would give himself the pleasure, 
and do Salcedo the honor, of attending 
him at his house with a horsewhip. After 

the indignant exit of General V the 

real row began. The German exploded ; 
practically told the Englishman he was no 
gentleman; included me in his excom- 
munication because I disagreed with him ; 
and for a few minutes it looked as though 
some of us would have to fight a duel to 
keep the peace. 

As our dispute was reaching the more 
gentle ground of an academic discussion, 

the portly figure of General V again 

crossed the patio, and with the dignity of 
an ambassador, but with some flashing of 
the eyes and much suppressed emotion, 
he stated that unless Senor Salcedo re- 
ceived within the hour an apology 
or the acceptance of his challenge, he, 
Senor Salcedo, would reserve to him- 
self 



lxij 
self the right to shoot the Englishman at 
sight. 

Our host looked at his watch, politely 
dismissed the general, and we continued 
our own quarrel, to which both fuel and 
zest had been added. At the end of the 
hour, together we walked down the road 
towards the steamship pier. About half- 
way there we passed Salcedo's house and 
saw him through the chinks in the 
veranda jalousies. The Englishman 
abruptly left us, lighted a cigarette di- 
rectly below Salcedo's balcony, put his 
hands in his pockets, and walked non- 
chalantly up and down. 

Nothing happened! No shots were 
fired. The German was furious. 

"The Englishman is brave, but an ass," 
he said. "They all are. The other chap 
is a coward, but he might have been 
enough of a sneak to have really shot." 
Then abruptly leaving us, as the English- 
man and I started down the road, he 
walked up on to the veranda, spat on the 
floor in front of Salcedo, pulled his nose, 
and said in Spanish, "Now send your 
friend to see me." 

When 



lxiij 
When our blood-thirsty German met us 
for dinner that night the details of the 
"affair of honor" had been arranged. It 
was to take place at daybreak the next 
morning, on the beach beyond the light- 
house point. Unless the German showed 
pity, it would be murder, as he could 
shoot like a frontiersman; but both in- 
clination and business expediency would 
be likely, on his part, to make the affair 
more humorous than fatal. 

A little before midnight the two men 
saw me aboard my ship, and with their 
promises of early advices of the duelling 
I had reluctantly to leave the port. 
Early the next morning, as I came from 
my bath and stopped outside my state- 
room to drink a cup of coffee in the fresh 
breeze of the open side-port, I saw a 
figure hastily disappearing in the opposite 
passage. It was Salcedo, who, the stew- 
ard told me, had quietly come on board an 
hour before me, and had been "sud- 
denly called away" (as he said) "on im- 
portant business." 

This reminded me at the time of a 
quarrel over night at the Club Cartagena, 

between 



lxiiij 
between two high government officials, 
both friends of the then President of 
Colombia, Dr. Nunez. Unforgivable 
words passed in the presence of a number 
of us, and an "affair" was arranged, this, 
too, to be at daybreak. 

Friends of both, anxious to avoid not 
only bloodshed but also a political scan- 
dal, hastily sought and awakened Dr. 
Nunez to ask if he would not do some- 
thing to prevent the duel, which would 
certainly prove to be "a la mort." 

"Certainly," said the president. "I will 
eat the dead!" And the old gentleman 
went back to bed. 

The remark, repeated at the club, 
brought so much ridicule on the princi- 
pals that nothing more was heard of either 
quarrel or duel. 

Rafael Nunez, for many years the pres- 
ident of the Republic of Colombia and 
effectually its dictator, was an interesting 
character. During the several years I 
lived at Cartagena he was both my near 
neighbor and my landlord in the little 
residential settlement on the beach outside 
the city walls. By the exercise of that sort 

of 



lxv 
of genius which is controlled less by ethics 
than by the laws of expediency, he found 
himself, at the end of a long civil war in 
1886, the practical dictator of his country 
and of the Constitutional Convention 
which had been called. 

The political party of which he had 
become leader was an adroitly formed 
coalition, held together by force of his 
personality, which left the irreconcilable 
ultraclericals and radicals in two such far 
detached groups that for nearly ten years, 
until his death, Dr. Nunez was the abso- 
lute ruler of Colombia. 

His power was both impressive and 
mysterious. During the latter years of his 
administration (which was when I knew 
him) he lived in retirement at Cartagena, 
a ten days' journey from Bogota, the seat 
of his government 

Of scholarly habits and tastes, modest 
in his bearing, simple in his life, and in no 
sense a soldier, even in his isolation he was 
able to exercise a more complete mastery 
over the Government and Congress at 
Bogota than any president of Colombia 
before or since his time. 

It 



lxvi 

It was his misfortune and that of his 
country that, remarkable as was his intel- 
lectual capacity, he never had a real grasp 
of the fundamentals of economics. He 
had a knowledge of all that was finest in 
the literature of most countries; he was 
proficient in practically all the Continen- 
tal languages, and his knowledge of both 
past and contemporaneous political his- 
tory all over the world was so complete 
that his brilliancy in conversation was 
often startling. His knowledge of human 
nature and his rare political sagacity, by 
which he kept opposing forces so evenly 
balanced that his own weight was always 
necessary, retained for him a power which 
would have been lost to a more forceful 
but less adroit man. 

Unhappily, the genius of Dr. Nunez 
never included an understanding of even 
the elements of money and exchange. 
With the exception of some small silver 
coinage for use on the Isthmus of Panama 
and by the coffee-traders on the Venezue- 
lan frontier, the money of the country 
was an irredeemable paper currency 
which bore the hopeful promise that the 

Republic 



lxvij 
Republic of Colombia would pay the 
bearer the stated number of pesos in 
"moneda corriente del pais"— that is to 
say, in current money of the country, 
which, by reference to the code, one found 
to be precisely the piece of paper on 
which the promise was written,— a vicious 
circle which ought to please the most 
radical advocate of fiat money fallacies. 
The history of this currency during the 
years in which my relations with it were 
very close is interesting. 

In 1 891 the exchange rate in Colombia 
was 180. That is to say, 1.80 Colombian 
pesos (or dollars) would purchase $1.00 
United States gold. 

Owing to reasonable prosperity in the 
country and the absence of any important 
further inflation of the amount of paper 
issued by the government or in circula- 
tion, the exchange rate for the next two or 
three years did not exceed, say, 220. The 
average was approximately 200 for the 
two years, which meant that in our rail- 
way accounts, which by law had to be 
kept in Colombian currency, all gold ex- 
penditures,— for example, rails, cars, 

locomotives, 



lxviij 
locomotives, salaries payable in United 
States money, and so on,— when converted 
into currency and entered in the books, 
appeared at double the gold values. 

With a fairly constant exchange ratio, 
this, of course, made no more trouble than 
any ordinary conversion of one country's 
money into that of another. From 1895 
to 1905, however, vast amounts of cur- 
rency were issued to enable the govern- 
ment to pay not only for its extravagances 
but also for the expenses of quelling the 
prolonged insurrections which were in 
some parts of the country continuous dur- 
ing the ten years after the death of Dr. 
Nunez. Exchange actually reached, at 
first by a gradual annual increment and 
then by leaps and bounds, the enormous 
rate of 10,000. At times, even during the 
progress of the rebellion, 15,000 and 
20,000 exchange rates were not uncom- 
mon. Fancy, if you please, however, the 
heart-breaking grotesqueness of a railway 
accountant's books when he enters on the 
capital account a purchase of a locomo- 
tive at $10,000 gold in 1903 as costing one 
million pesos, when next above it in the 

account 



lxviiij 
account is one which cost the same 
amount in gold in 1894 and is entered as 
twenty thousand pesos ! Accounts became 
a mass of confused, meaningless figures. 
The president's modest salary, when en- 
tered on the books, was nearly a million 
dollars a year. Prices, I remember, 
created amusement among visiting for- 
eigners. A passenger on one of the 
Royal Mail boats stopping at Cartagena 
changed a twenty-dollar gold piece into 
Colombian currency. At the Hotel Ame- 
ricano he paid $20 each for Havana 
cigars, and $240 a bottle for champagne. 
In spite of his extravagance, he had a 
pocketful of soiled paper money when he 
returned to his ship. 

It was the poor man, however— the 
peasant— who had the most acute suffer- 
ing from the fall in value of the local 
money, and this fact should be noted by 
those who are deceived by the sophistries 
of cheap money advocates. 

The prices of all imported commodities 
—for example, all clothing, textiles, agri- 
cultural implements, iron roofing, fence 
wires, kerosene, and flour— necessarily in- 
creased 



lxx 
creased in direct proportion to the rise in 
exchange, but the wages of the laborer 
responded slowly to the rapidly growing 
change in values, and for years remained 
far below the normal parity with the new 
conditions,— in fact, I think the agricul- 
tural laborer of the interior is still se- 
verely handicapped. While the causes of 
the inflation obviously worked injury 
to the wealthy planters, the inflation 
itself worked greatly to their profit. 
The product of the sale of their coffee, 
when converted into the depreciated cur- 
rency, gave the planter a dispropor- 
tionately large amount of this sort of 
money in which the laborer was paid. 

The situation became so impossible for 
the railway at Cartagena that with the 
co-operation of the local merchants the 
railway company on one pay day paid all 
its employees and outstanding accounts in 
Colombian silver coin, imported pri- 
vately from the Isthmus, at the same time 
issuing new tariff schedules putting all 
payments to the railway on a silver basis. 
The over-night transition from one basis 
of values to another was effected not only 

completely, 



lxxi 
completely, but with surprisingly little 
difficulty. 

Perhaps the tragic and the humorous 
are not infrequently close to each other in 
all parts of the world, but it seemed to me, 
before I had learned how wickedly se- 
rious the political uprisings often were, 
that the Latin-American countries had 
more than a normal amount of the comic 
opera in their daily doings. 

It was during the minor insurrection 
late in '94, or early in '95, that over our 
own railway telegraph line from Calamar 
came the news late one afternoon that a 
large body of rebel troops were marching 
down the west bank of the river. They 
were said to be well armed, and in num- 
bers sufficient to subdue easily the small 
garrison there, and the governor at Car- 
tagena was urged to dispatch a special 
train with troops to the immediate relief 
of Calamar. 

The news caused the greatest excite- 
ment not only at Cartagena but along the 
whole line of the railway between that 
place and Calamar. Our special trains 
were rapidly put together and a regiment 

of 



lxxij 
of government troops entrained and 
started on their four hours' journey to 
Calamar. Meanwhile occasional dis- 
patches from Calamar recorded the 
movements of the approaching enemy. 
The troops arrived at Calamar in time to 
give the necessary relief to the suffering 
town, which had been threatened by no 
more serious an invasion than a herd of 
cattle being driven from Portreros, near 
Mangangue, to the coast for ultimate 
shipment to Cuba. 

One evening during the period when 
guerrilla bands of rebels were infesting 
the territory along the line of the railway, 
I remember discussing with General 
Velez, then Secretary of War of the De- 
partment of Bolivar, the adequacy of the 
protection which the government pur- 
ported to be giving the railway line be- 
tween Cartagena and the village of 
Turbaco. We finally decided to make a 
personal inspection of the line, which we 
did on horseback during the night. 

At one of the outposts we were saluted 
by the officer in command with an im- 
mense, rudely constructed wooden sword, 

not 



lxxiij 
not unlike those we have all made as boys. 
That and some enormous home-made 
epaulets were his insignia of rank, and 
apparently created no amusement in the 
minds of his variously armed volunteer 
subordinates. It did not seem possible 
that we were within the area of an actual 
war,— and yet a few nights afterwards, 
almost within calling distance of that very 
outpost, one of my own farm boys, bring- 
ing into town the morning milk, was 
attacked by guerrillas, and because he de- 
fended his cargo was badly wounded, his 
ears were cut off, and he was otherwise 
mutilated from sheer wantonness. 

The burning of our railway bridges 
and trestles, the withdrawing of spikes 
and fish-plates from the rails, and other 
attempts to wreck the trains, particularly 
those carrying troops, were continuous. 

Our superintendent devised a rather in- 
genious way of preventing serious acci- 
dents: In front of each locomotive he 
would place from three to six empty flat 
cars, which would pick up, so to speak, 
and absorb whatever particular form of 
disaster had been planned for the train 

itself 



lxxiiij 
itself. By running always at moderate 
speed, this method proved so effective that 
we had no actual disaster except the ditch- 
ing of a considerable number of flat cars. 






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